Trigger Warning: This essay talks about bullying. Please take care of your mental health while reading.
“Laaanjuuuu?” Ms. Takahashi called out the class roster as she protruded her lips out like a duck.
She glanced around the room of eager children sitting on colorful mats.
My name is Ranju, not Lanju, I thought, as I raised my hand sheepishly, my insides boiling.
Ms. Takahashi checked my name off her chart. Bulldog Akiko, the class bully, giggled and I felt a punch right through my left cheek.
Kae, her apprentice, followed with rumbustious laughter. One blow to the other cheek. Knocked out— another day in my life.
Life as a Nepali in a Japanese kindergarten was rough, to say the least. But this is not a sob story.
It’s about how a little girl helped me survive Japanese kindergarten, and how as a result, I changed my name.
Matter of life and death
“Ms. Takahashi called me Lanju again,” I told my mom for the umpteenth time.
“How many times do I need to tell you, they can’t roll their Rs,” Mom muttered as if I had said the most ridiculous thing.
My mom was a simple woman who married an intelligent man 13 years older, a man raised in poverty in Nepal, who went on to win a graduate scholarship at an Ivy League in New York.